On Mother’s Day: I heard of Mother’s Day eight years back. My eldest daughter Mallika had become a mother in London and her friends started wishing her. So she too sent me a Mother’s Day card. That’s how I learnt what Mother's Day was. I sent her a card too. Now I get such alerts on Facebook!

Frankly for us Indians, every day is Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. I don’t see what there is to celebrate. Maybe it works in the western world to have such occasions where they come to meet the parents once in a while.

On my mother: My mother Shyama Wahi is now 85. She divides her time between my house and my brother’s in Alipore. She kept a beautiful house. She was obsessed with cleanliness. The cover on the fridge was hand-embroidered by her. She was very houseproud. Though there were just the four of us we had relatives staying over all the time at our Diver Lane house. She was also very strict. If she said “Abhi nahane jana hai”,  I had to go take a bath there and then. Even if I was reading a book and was at a critical juncture there could be no waiting.

When my marriage was fixed the first thing that crossed my mind was no one will tell me when to eat or sleep! 

Birthdays were for children. My brother and I got a book and a new dress. There were no cakes. Blowing out candles was not taken as an auspicious sign. Parents never celebrated birthdays in our family. Their day was the anniversary. Father would buy mother a sari and all the women would discuss for hours who among the men had the best taste in sari selection. 

In fact, my own birthday in my adult life came to the fore when little Mallika approached a friend of mine who made cakes at home with a 25p coin from her piggy bank, asking if she could make one for me! She would also force her father (Chandan Basu) to get me a gift but mostly it was done by his secretary or purchase officer.  Nothing of the romance of my parents’ anniversary gifts was there in it.

We travelled a lot. Every summer would be spent in a hill station near Delhi and every winter in Puri. We also went out on long weekends. My father had a Morris Minor and we would pack an electric kettle, a pack of cards, two mattresses and drive off to Maithon or some such getaway.

A Mother’s Day gift I wish I could give her: She is still fond of eating but doesn’t like to go out much. She would rather have me cook something at home. Perhaps a full day’s company would be the gift she would enjoy most. There is so much to do (with the shooting of Basu’s ongoing serial Radha on Zee Bangla and the upcoming production of her theatre group Choopkatha) that I cannot give her as much time as I’d want to.

A gift I would want from my children: At our age, all we want is to spend time with family. My daughters are all settled abroad — Mallika and Bithika are in London, the second one Juthika is in Bangkok.